One night, after I’d refused him, he got out of bed and went into his study. I heard him make himself a drink, turn on the computer, lean back in his chair and then nothing, nothing but the silence and the ache of a man before he comes, the moments when moments seem to open and close, collapsing on themselves. I closed my eyes and thought of Liam’s body fused on mine, how when it was over neither of us moved and we would lie there, entwined and helpless. I reached for the phone and called him, skipping the formalities of greetings when he picked up. “I miss you.” He was silent. “I miss you too.” “I’m sorry about the other day. It was hard to talk and Sunny–” “It’s okay,” he said, cutting me offon Sunny’s name as if he didn’t want to hear it, to imagine it. I stared at the ceiling, the dark of the room. “I miss you.” “I know… I do too.” We were quiet, full of short sentences that amounted to nothing but the punctuation of absence: “I miss you,”
